Becoming the Mask
by Thepheonixhost
Summary: I'm not afraid of death. I couldn't be, not really, not impossible but improbable considering what I am. Who I am. I am what others might refer to as a paranormal creature. Samsara manipulation to my own soul would qualify as that. Most, if not all, my past lives have been less dangerous than the one I was born into, surviving will be hard. Semi SI-OC (No prior Naruto knowledge) AU
1. Chapter 1

I've always been able to remember. For the most part anyways, my first two births are a bit hazy as those were millions of years ago. Isn't that a funny thought, technically I'm eons older than everyone I meet in each of my lives but in reality my spirit isn't the only one going through this cycle. We all go through the cycle, from birth to death than a few hundred years of sleep to birth again. During the few hundred years of sleep we are supposed to forget for when we go through birth again we aren't supposed to remember.

I don't know why I could always remember, I just couldn't seem to forget.

My first life I lived in fear, lived with out fire, lived my life knowing that the light was safe and the cave was safety. When dark came, if we weren't in the cave then we died. There was no surviving a night outside of the cave. I don't really remember much more than that about it, it had been too long for me to be able to remember.

The first time I realized I could still remember was after my second birth. There really wasn't much difference to my first one, besides the fire and the traveling. I guess I could label the family I had then as Nomads.

Frankly I wish I could forget and just be ignorant. Knowledge from past lives can be useful but in others it kills. I can still remember starving as I waited for my trials at Salem. They had condemned me to be filled with Satan, something that needed to be killed before it spread much like a plague. They had kept me in a dark root cellar with little to no light, a piece of bread and a little water to keep me alive long enough for the trials. The trials didn't last long though. I didn't get much say in defending my self and a man preposterously claimed that I had the power to inflict pain on him from mere glance and showed off a rather nasty burn across his forearm.

I can still remember the feeling of the rope around my neck. I wish that it would simply just vanish from my memory but alas wishes don't come true.

Between each cycle I slept for about three hundred years give or take ten years. It wasn't a deep sleep, it was light and thoughtful, at times I could even open my eyes see what was happening for a moment or two. Nothing could keep me awake for very long though, they were just mere glimpses.

I had about a hundred more years to sleep when I felt a strange pull on my consciousness. It was odd and much like what happened to me before another cycle could continue but that wasn't right, not at all. I wasn't going to be called upon for another hundred years, I wasn't ready. My soul was still tired, but the pulling got stronger and then I could feel the contractions.

It always hurt being squeezed out of a hole, no matter how many times it has happened to me-I couldn't help but scream when I was finally released. The world was still a blurry white with spots of brown and black mixing in with hues of gray. This information was odd to my senses because hospitals in these later years where always white with blue blurs and way too bight for a new born's eyes.

From my vantage point, I could hear mutterings and cooing in a language quite foreign than any of the other dialects I had come accustom with in my other lives. It was strangely like the modernized Japanese mixed with an ancient part of their dialect, it reminded me of when Japan used to house samurai. Back before America forced it out of isolation.

Out of everything I heard through out my first year of terrifyingly dark blindness I caught onto my name. Chiyoko, child of a thousand generations. It was always spoken to me by a sliver tongue. Not that the tongue was actually silver, more like the tone was soft and slipped easily from the persons mouth to my ears. This was one of the things I could pick out from my limited knowledge of Japanese, both ancient and modern. Even being reborn so many times I had managed to be every different kind of race besides Japanese.

Through my second year I began to realize some things and pick up on others. One I could see it just really was that dark in this place, two I could move on my own but I had a limited amount of space to move around in, three a very pale man with long greasy black hair would stick me with needles and talk to me, four I had some sort of something humming in my veins and when I tried to 'feel' it, it left burns on my skin, five I was female, and six I wasn't alone.

There was another baby with me, it was quiet most of the time though and only bothered to cry when it needed something. About half way through the second year I figured out that the baby was male and the pale man would call him Tenzou. It was odd I guess. I never had a sibling that survived the age of six months before, they had usually gotten sick and never made it past that age point.

In my third year the pale man had stopped sticking me with needles but he would watch me closely. I would have called him Father had he not reprimanded me the first time I had made that mistake. Tenzou still got the needles though, he had turned two and in his brown hair I would always find leaves despite being under ground. This was also the year that I realized that we didn't really look alike. He had brown hair while I had black, he had brown eyes while I had green.

About three quarters of the way through my third year Tenzou and I got a sibling. The baby was strange, perhaps even stranger than I was. White tuffs of hair and bleached red eyes that looked more fuchsia than anything. The pale man called her Nozomi. By this time I had learned how to talk in short easy sentences as I still tripped on other words and Tenzou was just beginning to experiment with his words, we had both taken to calling her Zo-chan.

Closer to the end of my third year but before the beginning of my fourth year the pale man had told me what the strange humming was in my body. It was chakra. It worked essentially like magic or chi in my past life. It was a form of my will made manifested. Then he told me that because of who my mother was I was unique and could do something no one else could. I could switch genders by use of my chakra. When he had told me that I think I just stared at him for a while. Who would want to just randomly switch their gender at any given time?

The pale man then proceeded to teach me how to activate this bloodline. It took me a full six months before I could change. By then I was four and Tenzou was three, little Zo-chan was two. I felt weird after the change. My whole body structure had bulked up slightly from the density of my bones to the width of my shoulders. Both Tenzou and Zo-chan didn't like it when I was a boy.

By the time Umeko came into our odd family I had gotten the hang of switching from female to male then back. I still didn't get why this was important but the pale man would insist that I learned it. Tenzou had begun his training with, well, wood. He could make beams of solid wood that wasn't really any type of tree I could name. It might have been cherry, walnut, or birch. I wouldn't have known considering he wouldn't use it around myself or the other two girls.

Umeko was as normal a child as ever. She cried a lot. She had black hair like me but her eyes were a stunning black.

My fifth year came around and the pale man taught Nozomi. He taught her how to speak to the dead. Sort of, he taught her how to hide it better. Something seemed to worry the pale man, he would always cut our interactions short and he jumped Umeko's training up a year early. She was special. She could touch something and mimic it. If it was metal her body would harden to metal. If it was earth her body would take on earth qualities. We had noticed her little quirks a lot earlier during infancy but he was teaching her how to control it.

He pushed me to learn how to defend myself. He would do the same for Tenzou. Often he would pit us against each other, Tenzou would win most of the time when I was female. As a male I had about a fifty percent chance of winning simply for the difference in strength.

Nozomi began to spar with us after the pale man began to limit his visits with us. Eventually we only saw him twice a week. By this time something was wrong and we all knew it. Umeko wasn't allowed in on the spars just yet as she still didn't have a complete handle on her bloodline quite yet.

All at once the pale man left us to fend for ourselves for a whole month. We had food storage down where ever we were being kept but that had only lasted us so long after rationing it out. At the end of the month men with white masks invaded our home.

* * *

It was strange when the masked men told us we were safe, there was no need to worry, and how we would finally be free. Umeko clung to Tenzo and Nozomi would hold my hand while they whispered sweet nothings to us, we were blindfolded though and led out of our home. I didn't understand it, were we not safe back in that room? If we weren't there anymore would we ever see the pale man again? I had so many questions but I bit my tongue and followed silently.

I didn't have a clue where we were going but it felt warmer. In our home it was never really cold but it wasn't necessarily warm either. It was neutral, perfect, I didn't like where we were headed now though. I didn't like that we were leaving our safe haven. It was all that I knew in this world and I was afraid of what would come next.

"Hokage-sama." I heard the masked men whisper in awe around the four of us children. It confused me though, the fire shadow? What did that even mean?

"He's important," Nozomi whispered to me as she tucked herself into my side.

I took her word for it, I couldn't see him through the blindfold. I felt Tenzou reach out to me for safety. I let him curl into my other side, Umeko was more than likely doing the same to Tenzou.

"Wolf, Hawk, report." His raspy old voice filled the air with the slight touch of tobacco.

I tuned out the report because I already knew what happened and what they found. I had been living down there for five years. Nothing down their could have surprised me except maybe-"They had different folders on each of the experiments. These children each have three different ones describing their injection, birth, mutation, and medical stats."

It was silent for a moment and I was straining to understand just what was happening, I could hear rustling of fabric for but a moment before the sound of paper drew my attention.

"I see." The man uttered after a few minutes, silence again met his words.

I don't think I could have ever prepared for this moment though, "Hawk, there is no need for the blindfolds." And the cloth was tugged from my eyes. The room was hazy with smoke from hot boxing the room, but he sat there behind a paper ridden desk with a pipe in his wrinkling hands.

My eyes met his through the grey fog cloud that surrounded him, I held my tongue once again. If I was permitted to answers then and only then would I ask them.

"Do you know who I am?" The old man asked in a defeated voice, I could almost hear how tired he was in just the whisperings of his vocal cords.

"No." I answered truthfully, it wouldn't do us any good to lie in the pit of snakes at the moment. Once I knew what was actually going on the better it would be for my little make shift family.

He was contemplating something, looking over each of us individually, slowly. "I am the Hokage, do you know what that means?"

"No." I knew it stood for the fire shadow but that was the extent of my knowledge.

"It means that I am the protector of my village," He began before clasping his hands in front of him on the desk keeping the pipe in between his two hands, "You four were found in my village, do you know what that means?"

Why was he asking me all these questions, "No." I didn't have the answers he was looking for.

"It means that by law, you are under my protection." He sighed a bit and stood up from behind the desk. "I need to know the name of the person who kept you down there."

I blinked, "I don't know his name." It was the truth, all I knew was that he was pale and didn't like me calling him father.

The man walked around the desk, "I was afraid of that," He took a breath from the pipe. "Rat, how much damage would be caused to them if a Yamanaka were to dig through their memories?"

"That isn't wise," A more feminine voice reached our ears and I turned my head to locate the source of the sound. I couldn't actually tell if she really was a she though, the uniforms made all the body types look exactly the same, no male characteristics and no female characteristics, just white armor over black cloth and a porcelain mask depicting an animal with black, red, and gray painted lines. "The mere presence of the chakra in the minds world would fry nerve endings and stimulate unending reproduction of cells that should not reproduce naturally causing them great pain and lumps in the brain. It would kill them and at such an age their memories are not reliable, too much of it will be muddied and soon forgotten. We could probably find one memory suitable for use but probably not before the child died. The Yamanaka are good but I've never heard of any one being able to read memories from a dead body."

"I see." So did I, and I was worried, after all he did seem to have the power to order the Yamanaka people to invade our brains.

He took another drag on his pipe and turned to a window that was only allowing a tiny sliver of moon light in, his feet guided him automatically to the wall just to the side of the window.

"There are two of them," Nozomi muttered to me, "they like to look over his shoulders."

I didn't answer, I didn't want them to become aware of what she saw even if they must have already known.

"Wolf, take them to base." The blindfolds were replaced, "I'll figure out what to do in the morning. Right now, get them checked up, fed, washed, and rested."

"Hai, Hokage-sama."

* * *

**Trial? How did you like it? Should I continue it? **

**I've had this idea in my head for a really long time, just never was able to put it into words as I didn't have the time to actually sit down and focus on it since Sora is trying to take over my life and ALUM just recently grabbed my attention, anyways I simply put this off for far too long.**

**Please, I'd like your feed back!**


	2. Chapter 2

"Nee-chan, they're back again." Nozomi whispered into my ear as she tried to smother herself into my side.

I didn't respond. It wasn't good to encourage something that could have the potential of ostracizing ourselves from this world. The pale man had told us we were special, different from almost every one else. I had hoped Nozomi would have picked up on it, she was being quiet though.

"Chi," Tenzou cuddled my other side, "Chi I'm scared."

"So am I." I softly squeezed his hand, "but we're still together, that has to count for something."

Umeko crawled into my lap as we sat on the lower bunk. We had been brought to this room blind, it had two bunk beds with two night stands separating the room into two different sides. None of us had even thought about having our own bed though, "Chi, Ko-ko's cold."

I smiled and rested my chin atop her head. The innocence of a two year old was encouraging.

There was a knock at the door before it swung open. Two masked men or women were standing in the door way. One mask had three red lines originating from the nose, one going up the bridge and forehead, the other two lines over the cheek bones. The other mask had long pointed cat ears with two triangles above the eye holes.

Nozomi whimpered a little bit, "There's one on his shoulders." I squeezed her hand a little bit more, "He's missing his stomach."

I resisted the urge to gag.

"Hokage-sama wants to see you." The cat ears one spoke in a scratchy voice.

"Okay." I agreed because what other choice did I have right now? Right now with how little we all were, we were at the beck and call of this 'Hokage-sama.' Faintly I recalled the pale man telling me about the title. I only could remember the bitter tone he used when he said Hokage-sama though.

We were blind folded again and led away from the small room.

It was warmer where we were headed, lighter too. I could feel the sunshine on my skin as we walked in a single file line.

* * *

The blindfolds were lifted, a man dressed in white robes sat in front of us with a soft smile on his face. An unlit pipe hung from his fingers suspended slightly above the desk that was littered in paper. "Ah, good morning."

I blinked, this place looked a lot brighter with out the curtain of smog. "Morning." Was it really morning? It felt more like afternoon.

He looked amused at the four of us for about two minutes before he sobered up and waved the two masked men to leave. "Chiyoko, Tenzou, Nozomi, Umeko." I straightened in surprise, as a reflex I pushed myself forward in front of the other three. "I am terribly sorry for the awful things that were done to you while you were in that lab." I wasn't expecting that. "We know exactly what was done, yes, I know about your specialties." He leaned forward and pointed at me with the pipe, "Chiyoko can change gender with the use of chakra," He turned to Tenzou, "Tenzou can use the Senju's mutation. Mokuton, one of the most powerful mutation Konoha has ever had." He tapped the desk in Nozomi's direction, "Nozomi can speak with the dead. If I remember correctly, yesterday you told Chiyoko that there were two of them that liked to look over my shoulder."

I swallowed, _how_?

"H-Hai." She said ducking slightly behind me.

"What do they look like?" He asked clasping his hands in front of his face leaving only his eyes in view.

She pressed herself into my back, "O-One has white hair, the other has brown. They're brothers though." She hiccuped in surprise and completely hid behind me, "The white one said they were Hashirama and Tobi... Tobirama."

Hokage-sama's eyes softened, "Sensei is watching over me?"

Nozomi didn't respond.

He heaved a heavy sigh, "Then we have Umeko. The one who was born with the most peculiar mutation. Absorption."

"What do you want?" I asked pulling Umeko behind me as well.

"I don't want anything but to help you."

I narrowed my eyes, "Help us how?"

His eyes became guarded, he knew exactly what would happen. He was controlling this entire conversation I realized. "You need training, and a home. I can provide that."

"What's the catch?"

His eyes widened only a tiny amount and if I hadn't been staring at them I wouldn't have noticed, "All I ask of you is to be happy. We will make arrangements for you to go to the academy after Umeko and Tenzou know how to hide their powers."

I grit my teeth, there was a lot not being said at the moment, a lot that was being hidden from me and I didn't like it.

"You of course won't be expected to do this on your own." He reached into a desk drawer for his tobacco. While he stuffed the bowl with the stuff. "I promise we will find you a very good care taker-"

The door slammed open from behind us. I turned on a dime and flooded my system with my carefully controlled chakra. The change was instant and I was glad I had chosen to wear my 'guy' clothes the day we were abducted. My muscles thickened, my bones grew, my hips narrowed, and my hands got larger. I fell into a defense ready stance.

"Hokage-sama!" A man dressed in the similar garb as the other masked men with his own mask on the side of his face. "We found others!" His brown hair was askew and matted with sweat.

"Others?" He parroted from behind me.

"Hai, several of them." He straightened up and shut the door behind him. "They were in a very back corridor of the first location. A incubation room of sorts." He walked forward to kneel in front of the desk, Hokage-sama was standing up behind it with his fists clenched. "There were thousands of them."

Hokage-sama looked down at him through narrowed eyes. "Fetuses?"

"Yes all of them were." The man stood back up, "there were maybe two that looked healthy enough to be hatched. The others though look malnourished, Goat doesn't think they'll survive."

"What won't survive?" I asked ruining the moment. They noticed the four of us and immediately clammed up. I could see Hokage-sama's eyes look over my form with interest. I know it was weird but the transformation didn't hurt me. It never did.

"Loon." The man shoved his mask over his face, "get these children back to the nursery. I'll be at the first location in a few minutes."

* * *

I sat up simply listening to the sounds, there were three heads in my lap. My body was currently female, and I was tired.

I was bone tired, not the tired that you haven't slept in a long while more like the tiredness of life in general. My soul was exhausted, I had been torn from my sleep prematurely and I was almost positive that the pale man knew it too.

I didn't necessarily blame him or hate him. I figured it was just a mistake, a consequence of his meddling with my 'mother' and the needles.

I yawned but that did nothing to show just how tired I really was. All I wanted to do was sleep.

I leaned my head backwards against the wall behind me and closed my eyes.

* * *

**I was going to make it longer and go into a different subject all together but I wrote something perfect to end on. I'll try and write the next chapter tonight, no promises though. I might not get the next one up and out for another week or so but I will try.**

**Thank you a million times for those of you had reviewed. **

**Enbi and iciclefangAJ thank you. This is my shout out for being the ONLY two who reviewed and actually encouraged me to continue this story.**


	3. Chapter 3

"What are we going to do with them?" Hiruzen sighed heavily, his pipe lay forgotten on the corner of his paper strewn desk.

"You aren't thinking what I think you're thinking." Muttered a bulky man that sat across from Hiruzen, a black bear mask with two white slashes across the top rested on his face.

Hiruzen grunted. There wasn't any other option that could remotely explain how one child who was born a good fifty years too late suddenly found himself with the mokuton. The only other option was to bring back the wandering Senju Princess, but he couldn't do that to her. She would be a mess here. She would be completely useless to the village in her state.

"They all are less than five years old." Bear insisted, "I can't take them on as new recruits. Do you realize how dangerous that would be? How un-Konoha like that would be?"

"Give me a better option then, Bear." Hiruzen curtly replied glaring at the desk. He knew it would be frowned upon but there wasn't anything he could really do about it.

"Put them all in the academy, the boy can come with me." Bear sighed, "Lord only knows the trouble we would be in if they found out the boy has mokuton with no relations to the senju."

Hiruzen felt his age, he could feel it in the creak of his bones, the horrors he has faced, and now this. It made him feel like the world was silently frowning at him telling him that he deserved less. "How do I explain what the girls can do? There is no explanation I could give the council, the teachers, and the parents that would set them at ease. It's best we just keep them in the shadows and pretend this never happened."

He could tell Bear was frowning behind his mask, "I can't and I won't take them in as ANBU recruits."

Hiruzen scrubbed his face with the palm of his hand, "I can't allow that." Hiruzen sat up straight, "Chiyoko can take up the seduction missions, seeing as she can be two different people. Nozomi can be your information gatherer once she can control her fear of the unknown, and finally Umeko can be your hard hitter."

Bear sat in silence for a moment, "It still doesn't change the fact that they are five or younger. I would put them in the academy like all the other potential recruits we will follow them, keep tabs and test them."

"I can't put them in the academy."

Bear sighed frustrated, "I understand. I'll figure something out."

* * *

Bear scrubbed his hands in a fitful frenzy, the scorching waters pinked his skin as it streamed over them. This problem with the kids that were literally staying three doors down was bringing back his nightmares full force. The small children his hand had choked the life out of them kept screaming in his ears to just 'please STOP!' He could feel the wetness on his cheeks but he was too far gone to do anything about it. He could still feel the tiny nails as they dug into his hands begging for air.

He almost jumped when a pair of arms encircled his waist. "Come back to bed, would you?" She spoke softly, her voice was still coated with sleep.

He blinked and turned the water off. This was reality. He needed to let those kids go, the ones he couldn't save because there were four children in need of his help. He allowed his wife to lead him back to bed. Now wasn't the time to loose sleep, no now was the time he needed to be ready for his new recruits.

* * *

**I apologize for the lateness of this chapter, my life decided to take off like a jet plane and I was left hanging on a rope hoping to god I didn't fall off and go kersplat on the pavement below. I haven't had the time to actually write this into a better chapter. I've been staring at it for far too long and finally decided it needed to get put up. I'm sorry its short. I was planning on making it longer but nothing I have planned out in my head matched up with this chapter.**

**Now before you all bemoan that the Hokage would never argue with his ANBU captain, think about this. If he didn't have any one to bounce ideas off there wouldn't be a council (yes that is to keep the power balance in place but seriously they are called council members for a reason) I figured he could only have his most trusted comrade as the ANBU captain and to give him leeway over so many powerful kids with an S-rank secret, that and he was searching for a better solution to the problems. Of course there wasn't so far. If you have a solution please drop the suggestion by and I'll look over it.**


	4. Chapter 4

**It's been such a long time that I really must apologize. I had never intended to leave this story just hanging for years. **

**My excuse? It's not really an excuse but it is the reason why I couldn't continue. I lost my daughter just after having her for five days. I was not in a good place, I could barely eat, I had a hard time getting out of bed to go to work I no longer loved. Her father moved cities about a week after her funeral. We weren't married. It took a long time but I got myself a new job, moved towns, made a few new friends, I planted a white rose at Charlotte's gravestone and took some grieving counseling that made me face that it wasn't my fault that my baby died, there was nothing I could have done because it was a genetic disease that both mom and dad carried that took my babies life. It took a really long time for me to be able to say her name without getting teary eyed. I'm not completely healed but I'd like to say I'm in a much better place.**

**I've changed my writing style and had to change the original plot behind this story to continue it, I still hope that you haven't fully given up on me.**

* * *

"Give them to me."

Hiruzen looked up from his desk after finishing his signature. "Danzo."

Danzo kept his posture strong and mostly open standing in front of Hiruzen's desk, his only visible eyebrow raised.

Hiruzen sighed, "You know I can't do that. Root will not be gaining any more members."

Danzo's scowl deepened. "We are at war."

Hiruzen paused and placed his hands underneath his chin, "Exactly. I need stronger visible ninja, not shadows."

"So you plan on passing them off as mutants and put them into the Academy?" Danzo folded his arms across his chest.

"I have ANBU watching them and they will be going through extensive training to try and contain their individual abilities before we drop them off into the Academy, but essentially, yes, that is the plan."

Danzo pursed his lips, "That's not very sound."

Hiruzen sighed and picked up his pipe, "Mutations happen all the time, Danzo. Even the Mokuton was a mutation, unfortunately, that wasn't passed to his children." He picked up a pinch of tobacco and stuffed it in the bowl.

"Is it really wise to place children that have been experimented on in the Academy?"

"Danzo. We are losing the war. Too many of our forces are in the shadows and it is making Konoha look weak." Hiruzen snapped his fingers a flame jumping to life over his thumb. "Unless we give Iwa and Kumo a reason to fear us there is no chance of us winning the war." He used his thumb to lite the tobacco.

Danzo was obviously not happy with this answer. "You had best be ready for the obvious explaining you'll have to do." Danzo then turned and walked away as Hiruzen took a long drag from the pipe.

"Don't I know it," Hiruzen muttered watching Danzo's retreating back. He leaned back in his chair rubbing the side of his face. "Get Goat in here."

Hiruzen took another drag of his pipe, opened a false drawer under the first one to his left and pulled out several folders.

"Hokage-sama?" He looked up to see Goat knelt on the ground, a fist over her heart and her masked face lowered to the ground.

"How many of the fetuses are salvageable?"

Goat rose from her kneeling position. "Five for sure another twelve if we can figure out how the scientist fed them." She grabbed her porcelain mask that had a gray triangle pointing towards the ground on the chin and two black dots under each of the eyeholes and pushed it to the side over her black hair.

"Have we made any leeway with that?" Hiruzen asked meeting Goat's black eyes.

"As far as we can tell it's a series of seals, with your permission we would like to pull Namikaze-kun or Uzumaki-chan into the project."

Hiruzen frowned, "How do you think Uzumaki-chan would react?"

"She will remain professional Hokage-sama."

"I will trust your opinion, Mikoto. As you do know her best." Hiruzen rubbed the side of his head. "I'm getting too old for this."

Mikoto stayed silent.

"I will be assigning your team to the fetuses if any others can be saved, save them. Uzumaki-chan will be a consult, please fetch her for me and I will debrief her."

"Hai, Hokage-sama." Mikoto slipped her mask over her face and put a fist to her chest in a bow before vanishing in a shunshin.

* * *

"Come in," Hiruzen called out at the knock on his office door, he heard the door open as he finished the last signature on the last piece of paper on his desk.

"You called for me, Hokage-sama?"

He sat back picking up his pipe at the same time to look at the redheaded woman in her violet eyes. "That I did Kushina." He pulled out his false drawer and placed the multiple folders on the top of his desk. "Unfortunately it isn't for any happy circumstances. This is classified as S-rank, are you willing Kushina?"

Kushina's eyebrows disappeared underneath her hitai-ate in surprise. She folded her arms over her flank jacket. "Of course."

Hiruzen eyed her for a moment. "This is very important, Kushina, it may even go against your morals."

"If you are trying to talk me out of it, you aren't doing a very good job," Kushina said, her left eyebrow twitching.

He smiled, "Very well." He stood up and beckoned her closer to his desk, he could feel Hawk activating the privacy wards. "Three days ago an underground lab was found on Konoha soil. Inside could only be described as a mad scientist's lab. On top of that, we found four children-"

"Children?" Kushina breathed out in outrage.

Hiruzen narrowed his eyes at her, she shut her mouth. "Yes, four children that were results of experiments on adult women. We have found and located the bodies of these women, unfortunately, all four of them were dead and have been for quite some time. Of the four women only two we were able to identify, Senju Mio, and Senju Aina. We suspect that the other two women were also Senju."

"I thought that Tsunade was the last Senju?" Kushina asked dumbstruck.

"These two ladies were thought to have been Killed in Action during the second war. I suspect that if we come across another lab that hasn't been emptied we will more than likely find more of these missing Senju. I have someone looking up a list of missing Senju women from the second war."

Kushina looked sick.

Hiruzen felt sick, "The two ladies were missing their ovaries, the other two were too decomposed to find any anything conclusive, but we suspect that their ovaries were missing as well." Hiruzen paused and pushed four folders to her side of the desk. "Those are the medical records of the four children, whoever did this was very thorough. The children were given names, Chiyoko, Tenzou, Nozomi, and Umeko. I'm almost certain that they are the last of the Senju now."

"I see." Kushina looked slightly green but flipped the closest folder open, "Subject Chiyoko shows higher stimuli processing than average babies..."

"I don't know how they did it but it says that the pulling of a soul into her body was successful."

"Pulling of a soul?" Kushina looked up astounded.

"Chiyoko has a soul of a dead person. Apparently, it was a rough pregnancy on the woman and Chiyoko was to be born a stillborn and he performed a variety of the Edo Tensei that was said to be created by the Nidaime." Hiruzen felt his age in that moment, admitting that the man he had basically hero worshiped for years had attempted to bring back the dead was sickening. "I'm not entirely sure how the Edo Tensei works, if it really was the Second's original jutsu it will be written in his forbidden scroll."

"If it's forbidden who had access to it?" Kushina asked looking up from Chiyoko's folder.

"Only I have access to it. Whoever got to it bypassed several Seals that Uzumaki Mito had personally placed in the area."

"Even I can't do that. They would have to have prior knowledge and practically perfect chakra control-" Kushina dropped the folder and pressed her hands to her mouth with a gasp. "You don't think?"

Hiruzen shook his head, "Tsunade hasn't set foot inside Konoha since Kato Dan passed away."

"Who could have done this?"

"I will admit that there is only a handful of people that were familiar with Mito's seals, three are dead, one hasn't been in Konoha in years. The others are Orochimaru, Jiraiya, Shimura Danzo, Utatane Koharu, Mitokado Homura, you, and myself."

"And out of those people, the only ones with medical backgrounds are Orochimaru and Utatane Koharu." Kushina finished for him.

Hiruzen felt sick, there was only one choice out of the two of them, "I'm afraid that it might be Orochimaru, he is a part of the experiments on the ones we have in custody."

Kushina looked at him in disgust. "We experiment on our _war_ prisoners?"

"We found Artificial Uteruses in the same lab that the four children were found in." Hiruzen was obviously ignoring Kushina's outraged question.

Kushina looked stubborn for a moment, "Artificial Uterus?"

"There were fetuses inside of these, not all of them are salvageable but there are some that do have a chance, there are sealing arrays that we need to you to figure out how they work to save several of them." Hiruzen watched Kushina's eyes widen and her jaw drop before her face turned an ugly shade of green.

"I think I'm going to be sick." She pressed a hand to her lips and the other to her stomach.

Hiruzen watched her sway side to side slightly and then race to his trash bin near his desk. He sighed and turned from her wretching form.

"That's what he did with their ovaries," Kushina said as her hacking stopped, she shakily wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and straightened.

"That's what we believe. It never really says. These fetuses were messed with, changed just like the children."

"How far are they along?" This was professional Kushina, and it was very comforting to see this side of the young woman come out.

"Goat has reported that five of them could possibly be removed, I would assume that means that they are close to nine months." Hiruzen turned and opened a chakra locked drawer on the filing cabinet behind his desk and next to his window. He turned with a white mask in his left hand. "You will be assigned under Goat's command with the fetuses under the code name Rabbit." He held out the mask, it was blank. "Your commanding officer is the one who paints your mask."

Kushina took the mask from his hands. "My hair is a dead giveaway."

Hiruzen nodded and pointed to the inside of the mask, there was a series of seals along the forehead, "When activated it changes the color of the hair to match eye color."

* * *

It was quiet when my eyes fluttered open, three warm bodies rested near me or on top of me. I moved to sit up, removing Tenzou's head from my stomach and moving Nozomi's arms from around my chest. I rubbed my face looking down at Umeko who was sleeping between my legs and her head on my left thigh.

The door opened to our room, I watched the two masked people from the other day walk into the room. I frowned but stayed quiet.

"Good morning, Chiyoko." The one with the red slashed on the mask said in a very feminine voice.

"Morning," I repeated quietly.

"I'm Panther, and that is Crane." Cat masked one said, his voice wasn't quite as scratchy as it had been before.

"Hokage-sama has assigned us as your immediate caregivers, and we will be training you." Crane stepped forward and took her mask off causing her chocolate hair to change to honey blonde. "When I do not have my mask on please call me Hiroko."

Panther slid his mask to the side also changing his brown hair to honey blonde, "Without my mask I'm Hiroki." I looked at them wide eyed, they were twins, they had to be twins.

"Training?" I asked shaking my head slightly and gently moving Umeko from my lap, my leg had fallen asleep.

"We will be training each of you to control your mutations. Each of which seems to stem from your chakra. We are to train you to hide it to the best of our ability." Hiroko said taking a seat on the floor in front of the bed we had claimed.

The door opened again, all three of us looked up at the figure in the doorway. He was big and imposing with a black bear mask with two white slashed across the forehead. "Hokage-sama wishes to see Chiyoko." His voice was deep and reminded me of stones rolling down a hill.

Hiroki and Hiroko placed the masks back over their faces, their hair changed to chocolate brown. "Hai." Panther reached over and picked me up and off the bed without disturbing the other kids. He put me on the ground in front of Bear. "Do we need to escort her?"

"No. I will escort her." He reached forward and placed a blindfold on my eyes, he turned me around to tie it in the back.

* * *

**It's longer than the usual. Not by much though.**

**I am thinking about just dropping first-person altogether. I am not liking it.**

**Anyways, I have another 'filler' chapter planned for the next one and then there will be a time skip, it won't be a great one and it won't be the only one either.**

**I'm hoping I'm back for good.**


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